“You mustn’t cry,” the face said in English.
“Mary? Is it you?”
“I came ’round to see you, but your maid said you weren’t at home. So I decided to rest here for a bit before driving back. It’s such a long way. I left the driver snoring in his carriage outside the gate. I guess he’s used to long-winded women’s visits.”
“I didn’t know you were here.”
“You weren’t at the Palais des Fleurs at the usual time, so I sent you a message at your father’s house. I was worried you might be ill. Then I heard about what happened to you and that you were staying up here, so I had to come see you. I didn’t realize it was so far. I sent you a message to let you know I’d be visiting today, but you never responded.” She shrugged. “I came anyway.”
“I never received any messages from you, Mary, either at Nishantashou or here.”
Mary sat back, frowning. “But I sent them. The messenger said he gave them to your maid.”
For a few moments we gazed at the ink-washed sky outside the unshuttered pavilion window, each lost in our own thoughts. What else had Violet kept from me?
“So you had no idea I was coming,” Mary said incredulously.
“No,” I responded, smiling at her, “but I’m very pleased you’re here. I too wanted to see you, but life became too, how shall I put it, different. Else I should have sent you a message too-or responded to yours. You are so kind to come all this way.”
“I’m sorry about what happened, Jaanan.” She moved closer, linking her arm through mine. We looked for a while at our reflections in the black dusk of the window.
“You know,” she whispered finally, “something like that happened to me too.”
Her hand remained hot through the cloth of my sleeve.
I didn’t know what to say, so I kept my eye on her reflection. Her hair looked like it was made of light.
“Your fiancé?” I asked finally, to help her.
“No. Punishment.” Her voice was bitter.
“For what?”
“For not wanting them.”
I didn’t understand the meaning of her words, but saw she was sad and angry. She withdrew her hand and sat, head bowed, in the shadow.
“There were three of them. A lodger and his cronies. They saw me kissing a woman friend. They spied on me in my room while we were together.”
“What evil is there in a kiss among women?”
Mary looked at me wonderingly.
“When my friend left, they forced their way in and said they’d hurt me if I didn’t do the same to them.”
“How awful,” I exclaimed, remembering the stories of young women who flung themselves to their deaths rather than be touched by a man before their wedding day. I supposed that included a kiss, although now that seemed harmless enough to me.
“What did you do?”
She said softly, “I did what they wanted. What else could I do? They threatened me. They said they’d tell the landlady. I worked there, in the kitchen. I would have lost my position. I had no place else to go.”
“What about your friend?”
Mary stared at the dark window for a long moment before answering. “She’s the one who told them where to look. She sold me for a few pence.”
I didn’t see why men would pay to see women kiss. Perhaps in England women were kept hidden as they are among the Ottomans, and unscrupulous men paid to look at them.
“People heard about what happened anyway. They went around bragging about what they had done. No one would hire me. I lost everything.” I could hear Mary quietly crying, her face in shadow. “The wife of the minister of our church took pity on me and gave me a good reference, but only if I promised to reform. So I came out here.”
I leaned over and caressed the silken filaments of her hair. She let me stroke her hair, as she had my cheeks. She was lovely, taut, confused. I thought to gentle her in the way among women.
When after a while she touched her lips to mine, I misunderstood and she fell back.
“You startled me,” I said.
“It’s only a kiss,” she said breathlessly. “Won’t you let me?”
“You are right,” I admitted, ashamed of having repulsed her. “There is no shame among women, only comfort.”
We smiled bashfully at one another, our faces close enough to see in the gloom. I allowed her to kiss my mouth, then my neck. It reminded me of the balm that ran through me when Violet calmed my fears as a child and, after Hamza no longer visited, eased my sorrow. I had not desired Violet’s pity since Amin Efendi’s shameful attack, but this pale woman’s touch brought me back to my body. It is a blessing of womanhood that we may gather strength and pleasure from one another.
Like a mariner in uncharted seas, her hand traced the pulse in my throat to the top of my breasts, sheathing them in flames. Our lips lay together as twins. I felt myself arching back against the cushions as her hands pulled away the layers of cloth between us.
“Never strangers,” she breathed into my ear. “Not from the very beginning.”
She did not speak again, not even when I lay shuddering in her arms, my body her supplicant.
This was not the bread and water of Violet’s caress, but a veneration.
AFTER THAT WE resumed our weekly meetings. As the months passed, I thought less and less about Hamza, who did not come again. Instead, I savored the unfamiliar sensations of my first real friendship with a woman. Mary rented a carriage and we went for drives through the autumn countryside. When we discovered the abandoned sea hamam, we began to go there for our picnics. The driver returned at a given time or waited, snoring, by the road.
I unstacked the copper warming pots and laid them in a circle on the table. We threw a fringed cotton blanket on the mattress to cover the damp boards. Our bare feet hung in pairs, hers pale as milk, mine the color of fine china. As always, Mary had brought coal and kindled a small fire in the brazier. The jewelry I had given her winked from the shadows as she heated water for tea. From a corner nook, I extracted two tea glasses, the cheap kind bought in the market.
Perched on the mattress under a quilt, we fed each other pockets of flaky dough stuffed with cheese and parsley, tart fingertips of grape leaves rolled around rice and currants, fragrant bread kept hot in the tinned copper pans. After we ate, we smoked cigarettes and threw the remnants from the shady portico into the bright captive square of water. In another season these walls would hold the racket of children’s calls, shrill volleys of sound amid the placid murmur of their mothers’ voices telling and retelling. Their legs shyly entering the sea up to the ribbon at the knee. Bathing costumes worn like daring fashion gowns. The vulnerable body quickly pressed between plush towels so it did not sicken from a draft.
But not yet. It was still our sun and sea, our banging shutters, our sighing under the weathered boards. We lay still like split mussels, gathering a crust of salt. Her yellow hair was cut short, like a boy’s, and when she slicked it back wet, her face became naked.
31
To Sybil’s surprise, it is not difficult to arrange to see Shukriye. The women’s gatherings buzz with the news that she is staying with her sister, Leyla. The women prepare to visit the house in droves to offer sympathy to the sisters, whose father lies dying, and to assuage their curiosity about this member of their society so long gone. On the family’s first receiving day, Sybil joins the assault of the concerned and curious. Sybil hears the woman beside her whisper to a neighbor that Shukriye has borne three children, but that only one survives, a boy, just two years old.
“Mashallah, by the will of Allah,” the other woman answers in surprise, turning her head and looking appraisingly at Shukriye. “The poor woman. But at least she has a son.”
Shukriye, a plump woman in a caftan of exquisite brocade, sits on the divan, her face half hidden behind the wings of a gauze scarf that hangs to her breast. Sybil can see that her eyes are red from weeping. Shukriye’s sister, Leyla, keeps up the formal greetings and directs the servants to offer the guests tea, cakes, and savories from large silver trays. Another servant stands in the corner with a small stove and implements, ready to make coffee for anyone desiring it.